Poetry – Page 3 – Writers Resist

Two Poems by Nancy Squires

As the Waters Rise

O God, look down
On all our drowned.
Hear us, we beg—
We’re on our knees.
Sorry, so sorry
About the trees,

The polar bears, the birds,
The bees; the icebergs
Gone, the thirsty lawns,
Plastic gyres, redwood
Pyres and all the many,
many cars. The eclipsed stars

We never see. Our Father
In Heaven, we pray
To Thee: Give us
This day.
We promise, oh we swear
On a stack of extinctions

We will repair
Our awful ways
And lead us not into oblivion
Although we can’t pretend
We had no clue. Save us
Now—before
Amen.

It’s No Use, Ron DeSantis

Before Marie Kondo-ing
I had a pile of beads
in a drawer, cheap baubles
from Gay Prides past:
Chicago, where the crowd spilled
into Halsted, slowing the procession
to a crawl; New York,
where drag queens rode the floats
in headdresses three feet tall
just like Carnival; and Boston,
many years—the one
where Kevin was The Little Mermaid
on the Disney float—his costume
(which he stitched himself),
perfection and his makeup,
animated glam. That woman on the Harley
who dyed her mohawk rainbow
every year, and the time
Sally spotted her coworker
coming down the route—
she was surprised to see him
in a wine-colored corset.
No beads
from Lansing, Michigan,
my first Pride—not
a parade but a march
and what got thrown
at us were insults, curses, glares
from people holding signs
that said God hated us.
So let’s say gay
and everything else
there is to say.
I should’ve kept that pile
of shiny plastic beads—
not sure if it was joy
they sparked but something—
Kevin reclining up there
amongst the other Disney folk
his shimmery mermaid tail
sparkling in the morning sun.
Say it: gay.
All the livelong day.
She and he and them
and they: we
aren’t going back
inside the boxes.

Nancy Squires is a writer, lawyer, and freelance copy editor. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Dunes Review, Split Rock Review, and Blueline Magazine. She grew up, and currently resides, in Michigan.

Photo credit: Linda De Volder via a Creative Commons license.

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Crying in Texas

By M.R. Mandell

after “Kissing” by Dorianne Laux

Crying as they hope for blood,
crying as they flush the strips,
crying as they hide their bumps.
They are crying in bathroom stalls,
behind Sugarland’s Kroger store.
They are crying on Houston corners,
outside the boarded-up laundromat.
They are crying in each other’s arms,
at the Hampton Inn off Highway 10.
They are crying in their Walmart
uniforms, and their Ann Taylor
suits, in their Wrangler jeans,
and Zara boots. They are crying
alone, on the edge, salt burning
their skin. They are crying as doctors
turn them away. They are crying
harder than before,
before the pious Robes lied.
Crying as they hope for blood.

M.R. Mandell (she/her) is a poet living in Los Angeles. A transplant from Katy, Texas, she now lives by the beach with her muse, a Golden Retriever named Chester Blue (at her feet), and her longtime partner (by her side). You can find her work in Chill Subs, Boats Against the Current, The Final Girl Bulletin Board, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, The Bloom, JAKE, Roi Fainéant, sage cigarettes, Anti-Heroin Chic, Stanchion Zine, Fine Print and others. She has works forthcoming in Drunk Monkeys, unstamatic (photo), and Olney Magazine (photos)

Photo credit: Ernesto Andrade via a Creative Commons license.

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Montana

By Jeremy Nathan Marks

For Zooey Zephyr

The big sky fifty-mile
vistas where the Greasy Grass runs
willowed valleys sweeping memory
from the water to the sky an arrow long
ago fired but whose arc is heard
surely this land can contain one woman
who says of our laws that while we pray
to remain humbled that blood in our palms
is a great glacier melting as though we were
the sun.

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes Region of Canada. He is the author of the collection, Of Fat Dogs & Amorous Insects (Alien Buddha, 2021). He holds two passports and does not maintain a social media presence.

Photo credit: Michael Bourgault on Unsplash.

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The first day of cherry season,

By Emily Hockaday

the sky becomes apocalyptic. The air is
wool in my throat. I wear a mask to pick
my daughter up from school. The fruit vendors
sit next to their colorful carts like the world
isn’t ending, and I suppose it isn’t for now
or it is just very slowly. And what did
the vendors do at Pompeii? Skewer meat
and sling it under an eerie sky. I bring home
3 lbs of the jeweled fruits. The sun
is the same bright pink behind the haze—
a Rainier cherry hanging above us.
My daughter is studying wildfires
at school, or perhaps just the lifecycles
of trees. She tells me forest fires can be good
for the Earth, right? Because redwood seeds
need fire to grow. Our hallway smells
of smoke from the skylight. We move inside
a yellow cloud. Even as the air quality
outside becomes a disaster, we make plans
to cap our stove’s gas line. I think of
my daughter’s new pink lungs.
I was reckless with mine, but hers
are pristine, and I want to preserve them.
I imagine her serotinous redwood cones
cracking in the heat. I hope that’s
what humanity will do too. Crack
so that seeds release. At night
I roll a towel against her window.
The fires can only burn for so long.

Emily Hockaday’s second collection, In a Body, an ecopoetry collection with themes of parenting, chronic illness, and grief, is coming out in October 2023 with Harbor Editions. Her debut, Naming the Ghost, was released with Cornerstone Press in 2022. She has received grants from the City Artists Corp, Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation, the De Groot Foundation, and the NYFA Queens Art Fund. She is a fellow with the Office Hours Poetry workshop and was a 2022 resident at Bethany Arts Community.

Photo credit: Denise Kitagawa via a Creative Commons license.

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The Lure of Socks on Warm Feet

By Amelia Díaz Ettinger

Never forget, September 20, 2017 and Maria

In my La-Z-Boy I sit, a Puerto Rican queen,
feet-up admiring my knitted socks.
I made these socks by knit and purl.
5,746 miles away from you
it is easy to say, I worship.

—And oh! How I preach this veneration,

the warmth of pale green light
the whiteness of sand
the contrast of ocean currents
the dwarf forest, and the crowded towns—

Yet, the truth can’t be changed—I left.
Abandon your Central Cordillera for the Blues,
an exchange of choice, not necessity.

I saw the hurricane while wearing star-banded socks,
glued to a television where electricity is constant,
three hot meals a day, sitting at home.
There were no cold cuts day after bloody day,

no Samaritan truck around the corner,
no spoils of mud, and expiring life
no kitchens without a roof
no bottled water in locked warehouses
the trees bare of leaves, not a single flower
petals can’t contain the hurts.

That September, out my window,
the meadow was full of lupines.
Purple or gold,
their curious heads sat one on top of another
a soft pyramid greening gently in the breeze.
The sight of those flowers,
a hurricane of shame.

Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a ‘Mexi-Rican,’ born in México but raised in Puerto Rico. As a BIPOC poet and writer, she has two full-length poetry books published; Learning to Love a Western Sky by Airlie Press, a bilingual poetry book, Speaking at a Time /Hablando a la Vez by Redbat Press, and a poetry chapbook, Fossils in a Red Flag by Finishing Line Press. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, and she has an MFA in creative writing from Eastern Oregon University. Presently, she and her partner reside in Summerville, Oregon, with two dogs, two cats, and too many chickens.

Photo credit: Carissa Bonham via a Creative Commons license.

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Ho’oponopono

By Kelsey D. Mahaffey

“In the book of the earth, it is written:
nothing can die.” – Mary Oliver

The morning after it happens
again—weary with all
the thoughtless use of prayer,
I return to the Native path—

for solace,
for remembrance,
for release—

But grief is a heavy hold.

Last night, I lay awake
searching each shooting
star—the moon a wound
the sky refused to heal.

And today, as usual, the sun
woke from bended knees—
rising to break
the long hush of night.

So many have left
to hunt for arms—
answers or anger,
who can say? All around,

there are islands of dew
gathering the spring fields,
birds busy with work—
children still to feed.

Forgive us.

Somehow, a worn cradle of
moon still rocks—heaving waves
upon the shore. A ground dust dances
in the merciful arms of wind.

Dearest Mother,
if we ever choose to weep,
let it be tuned to the depths
of your whale’s forgotten song.

Kelsey D. Mahaffey rests her head in Nashville, TN, but keeps half her heart in New Orleans. She needs music and nature like breath and water, and walks the earth barefoot beside three humans and a bow-legged cat. Her work can be seen or is forthcoming in: Eunoia Review, Cumberland River Review, The Sunlight Press, and “The Keeping Room” at Minerva Rising Press.

Photo credit: Debbie Hall, photographer and author, and Writers Resist poetry editor.

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Two Poems

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By Camille Lebel

[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container][fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”no” hundred_percent_height=”no” hundred_percent_height_scroll=”no” hundred_percent_height_center_content=”yes” equal_height_columns=”no” menu_anchor=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”center center” background_repeat=”no-repeat” fade=”no” background_parallax=”none” enable_mobile=”no” parallax_speed=”0.3″ video_mp4=”” video_webm=”” video_ogv=”” video_url=”” video_aspect_ratio=”16:9″ video_loop=”yes” video_mute=”yes” video_preview_image=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” margin_top=”” margin_bottom=”” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=””][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_2″ spacing=”” center_content=”no” link=”” target=”_self” min_height=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”left top” background_repeat=”no-repeat” hover_type=”none” border_size=”0″ border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” padding=”” dimension_margin=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=”” last=”no”][fusion_text]The First Time, Reclaimed

I choose
the boy who calls every night to discuss a million nothings, our voices hushing
when my mother picks up the line. Sitting behind me in history, watching footage
of the earth imploding, his finger traces the one-inch ribbon of skin exposed
between low-rise denim and a too-tight tee. That one feather touch infusing
recognition of the word, want.

Free
we stitch trust together with running words. We reject awkward Applebee’s dinners, school dances, roaring football games. We find ourselves on sun-soaked park benches, breathing being. We do not perform piety at Sunday morning services, seeking parental approval. From one another, we require no promises of forever to embrace the now.

Shameless
we make informed preparations. We walk the fluorescent-lit aisles of the corner pharmacy,
no repentant red-cheeked glow burning our faces. He asks for explicit consent again.
And again. The night I soak sorrows in Absolut oblivion is not the time. He knows
a lack of protest is not an invitation. Yes. is not always yes.

Vulnerable
when the time comes, we pretend no prowess. We ask questions and listen to answers.
Entwined fingers move together into uncertainty. We explore with intention the paths between flesh and bone. We laugh at frequent fumbles. Eyes bright, he looks at all I am.
I name my needs without hesitation. Less. More. No. Yes.

Gentle
is the joining. Not two falcons spiraling toward the earth, all adrenaline in panicked plummet.
More clematis exploring the garden arbor until deep violet abounds, boards and blooms reaching skyward to the sun. More steady drip of the leaky kitchen faucet. Soft beads
falling patient, steady, until the sink overflows.

Empowered
I have no regrets. My worth is neither the presence or absence of this. I do not pray
for absolution. No aching knots choking my throat. My soul remains snow-pure. Intact.
Content, I turn into the man still beside me, and we sleep. The following day, he remembers
to speak to me.

Vocabulary Lessons

My son renounces simple language.

Pleading for syllables, his toddler tongue fumbles; focused persistence finding purchase

between jaws, biting into hard consonants with pearly milk-teeth.

He is ravenous for vowels rolling soft across his lips. Furious to be denied another

sweet. Dismayed at skinned flesh of a knee fresh-scraped across pavement.

Twinkling stars? Luminescent. Tiny fingers tying shoes? Infuriated. Plastic dinosaurs

make way for ichthyosaurus, velociraptor, paleontologist: his future endeavors.

I revel in sharing the sweetest delicacies: compassion, community, restoration, justice.

But his palate must abide bitter pills and unsavory days; already

he learns to name villains: avarice, prejudice, ignorance, exclusion. Dropping

succulent words into his open mouth, I offer phonemic morsels on a platter

praying they become blades to chisel hard hearts, transform myopic visions, demolish

fear with a clear, crisp voice speaking life abundant.

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Camille Lebel, educator and mother to seven, lives on a small hobby farm outside of Memphis. She’s published or forthcoming in Hidden Peak Press, Rogue Agent Journal, Literary Mama, Sledgehammer Lit, Black Fox Literary Magazine, ONE ART, Inkwell, and more. She enjoys traveling, horse-whispering, and eating dessert first. She largely writes in the school car-line as a way to process special needs parenting, child loss, and religious trauma. You can find her on Instagram @clebelwords.

Photo credit: “Clematis.” by Free the Image via a Creative Commons license.

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The Rise of a Martyr

By Bänoo Zan

For Nika Shakarami 1

At your memorial 2
the Luri 3 song echoed on speakers:
“Mother, mother, it’s time for war . . .” 4

Today would have been your birthday

Forty days before
on the streets of Tehran
dead girl—living God—
burning your hijab—
darkness on fire—
your Derafsh-e Kavian 5—

leading the chants
fearless—undaunted—unstoppable—
you were the female Kaveh
un-lionized in epic

When the dictator’s men closed in
revolutionaries dispersed in all directions
as shooting stars in a galaxy—

and then, they were around you—
tall heavy men—
who beat and threw you into a car—

That night, your phone was disconnected
all your photos and videos—
dances and singing—gone

Today would have been your birthday

The search started in
hospitals, prisons, morgues—

Days after, your mother received a call
“The kid was in our custody for a week
Revolutionary Guards wanted to
s l o w l y interrogate her—
After we built the case file
she was transferred to Evin prison.”

Then “The Call” came—
the family summoned to identify your body—

Today would have been your birthday

At your funeral, hundreds were waiting for
your coffin—that never arrived—

Your lifeless body kidnapped—
buried in some distant place—
But the uprising was where
the people were

At your tomb
that was not your tomb
your mother held up your photo—
no tears in her eyes:

Today would have been your birthday—
but is now your burial day—

Your martyrdom mobarak 6, Nika!
Your birthday mobarak!

Bänoo Zan is a poet, librettist, translator, teacher, editor and poetry curator, with more than 250 published poems and poetry-related pieces as well as three books, including Songs of Exile and Letters to My Father. She is the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Canada’s most diverse poetry reading and open mic series (inception: 2012), a brave space that bridges the gap between communities of poets from different ethnicities, nationalities, religions (or lack thereof), ages, genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, poetic styles, voices, and visions. Bänoo is the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Alberta, Canada, September 2022-May 2023.

Photo credit: val & Julien noé via a Creative Commons license.

[1] Sixteen-year-old protestor in the ongoing women’s revolution in Iran killed on 20 September 2022

[2] Chehelom, the 40^th, referring to the 40^th day after someone is buried, an important time in the mourning cycle for a person

[3] Pertaining to Lorestan or Luristan province, Iran

[4] دایه دایه وقت جنگه

[5] Iranian mythology: the standard of the Persian blacksmith Kaveh who led a popular uprising against the foreign demon-like ruler Zahhak, one of the stories versified in the epic Shahnameh, The Book of Kings, by Ferdowsi.

[6] Blessed

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The Revolution Is Wherever We Are

By Andrea Dulanto

Yes, I wore the thrift store T-shirts, the torn fishnets,
but I was no riot grrrl.

I was already in my twenties when I read about riot grrrls in Newsweek,
too old to write manifestoes on my body.

No, it was more like I was too afraid of music that gets into all of your nerves
(too loud, too punk, too queer)
visceral.

Despite my sincere lesbian fuck you to everything,
I was secure in the mainstream
or the alternative version of the mainstream.

Dutiful daughter
of conservative South American parents from Argentina and Peru,
raised to pass for/present as white
to be the middle-class Catholic school girl from the gated Miami suburbs
raised to be wary of all that threatens the fabric
of the supermarket and the mall,
the go to work, go to bed at a decent time of night
lifestyle.

raised to be a 1950s white middle-class housewife

raised to believe in American Top 40,
Casey Kasem

I was kept inside with all the safe music, safe as bleach,
nothing safer than strong chemicals to take away the dirt and screams of life.

II.

Christmas 2012, alone in my friend’s living room,
I watch indie films, documentaries
& for the first time, Portlandia.

At 42 years old,
I consider moving to Portland.

But what’s in Portland?

Same lawns, same garage.

I watch every Sleater-Kinney video on YouTube.

Carrie Brownstein is no longer a young young girl playing guitar to kids in record stores

she’s mature, polished
styled

she wears red lipstick

her house is a photo in fashion magazines
hardwood floors, Mad Men furniture.

I am older than Carrie Brownstein,
and I am listening to Sleater-Kinney as if I was 15.

O the red red lipstick

all the songs
I didn’t know.

III.

onstage
Carrie sways and kicks and thrusts her hips over to Corin
their body language, part of their music, their performance
she rests her head on Corin’s shoulder
another level of punk
another level of not caring what anyone else thinks

every queer heart
open (s)

IV.

no revolution in the suburbs

but the revolution
is wherever we are

alone in your friend’s living room
listening to Dig Me Out

a housewife
leaving home

Andrea Dulanto is a Latinx queer writer. Publications include Bending Genres, Entropy, FreezeRay Poetry, peculiar, SWWIM Every Day, Berkeley Poetry Review, Court Green, and others.

Photo credit: “Revolution and LGBT rights” by Nagarjun via a Creative Commons license.

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Birthday Wishes

By Phoenix Ning

Sixteen-year-old person of color desires escape from this inferno
where dark-skinned individuals burn, and alabaster spectators
cheer from the sidelines, popping confetti guns and feeding
oil to ancient flames while claiming to be long-awaited saviors.

Eighteen-year-old student desires world history classes with curriculums
that celebrate African kingdoms, Indigenous empires, and South Asian cultures;
textbooks that condemn armor-clad imperialists stripping gowns of freedom;
articles that honor revolutionaries whose empty pockets did not silence their shouting.

Twenty-three-year-old woman desires to shatter the chains created
by men who think all girls are moons trapped by their gravity,
males who believe themselves to be suns instilling life into
fragile females who must offer their bodies as tokens of gratitude.

Twenty-year-old lesbian desires to taste the sweet wine of love
and cavort in inebriated glory with the woman whose gentle touch
sparks wildfires in her heart frozen by acerbic remarks fired by toxic relatives
when she turns her head away from men and smiles at her rough-hewn ladylove.

Phoenix Ning is a twenty-year-old Chinese writer of sapphic antiheroines and queer found families. She is currently a senior studying human-computer interaction. When not writing, she can be found watching C-Dramas and penning raps. A fierce advocate of diversity in media, she hopes that her audience will feel empowered after reading her words or listening to her songs. Learn more at ladyphoenixning.com.

Image credit: Jennifer Rakoczy via a Creative Common license.

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(Judges 19) Remembering the Concubine

By Emma Goldman-Sherman

After being done to by the pack of men
after she collapsed at the threshold of the old man’s shack
after her master discovered her there unresponsive
he cut her up with his sharpened axe
not for nothing, not for hate, to get everyone’s attention
crying the way men cry when they do something brutal.

He cleaved her parts to send them out in hemp-woven sacks
dripping and stinking his petition, a missive to the leaders
and her rotten pieces spoke.

I hear her singing, her body in 12 parts
a music to force a response in each of 12 tribes
who replied with war, small punishment for blame.
They could have done much more
offered care, compassion, yes, new ways
to be men, what I want for my sons
and if my father still lived.

Let her body be remembered
that her neck might lift her head
again, her throat might breathe fresh
breeze her hands unclench and connect
to her unbroken wrists, and let her elbows
meet her arms to fold across
her newly expanding ribs. Recage
her softer organs to claim her heart’s
own vanished song as her feet re-ally
with her ankles, her knees reborn, her thighs
arise uncrushed as if nothing had ever gone
wrong. And let her hips sway freely untorn.

Emma Goldman-Sherman (she/they) is an invisibly disabled, chronically ill, autistic, gender dysphoric, queer, feminist poet and survivor. They support writers and artists at www.BraveSpace.online. Their plays have been produced on four continents and published by Brooklyn Publishers, Next Stage, Applause and Smith & Kraus. Their podcasts are available at TheParsnipShip.com and PlayingonAir.org, and are forthcoming from EmptyRoomRadio.com. Emma has an MFA from University of Iowa, where they helped organize a union for Research and Teaching Assistants. Emma is currently the playwright in residence at Experimental Bitch. Their poetry has been published at Oberon, American Athenaeum, Queerlings, Chaotic Merge, The Nasty Womens Poetry Anthology and others. Learn more at newplayexchange.org.

Image credit: “The Israelite Discovers his Concubine, Dead on his Doorstep,” by Gustave Doré, Circa 1880.

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Yet Another Poem About Trees

By Larry Needham

“Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!”

—Bertolt Brecht, “To Posterity”

Before the jar
the anecdote
and Tennessee,

wilderness.
Forests primeval,
grim and awful—

extravagant
as first growth
imaginings.

The Dark Ages.
Then dominion
bleaker still.

Maps, surveys,
plots, deeds, sub-
plots, divisions;

trees measured,
monetized,
milled to spec;

scaffolding
raised up, torn
down, tossed into

the burn barrels of
histories
declining on

the ash heap
crematoria
of woodlots

warming the near
reaches of
advancing night.

_____

Hard to admit
the bleak truth of
a twilight

premonition:
Birnam Wood
departing

that one cast shade on
clear-cut fell
ambition,

slash-and-burn
madness, doubtful
illuminations

kindled in darkness,
guttering in
airless corridors,

all talk of
tomorrows
sucking up

the oxygen,
and, at the end,
no one left to

breathe a word about
equities,
justice or

what followed in
un-natural
succession:

birthright woods
supplanted and
the newly planted

contracted to
an oak on crutches
and hollowed-

out sycamore, mere
stand-ins for
a tired allusion.

_____

The witness
to dark times
wasn’t wrong about

its silences,
indifference,
cold imperatives,

having weathered
the flood—too avid,
perhaps, for landfall

too hopeful of
olive branches,
rainbow signs and

fruitful generations-—
unmindful of the
fire next time,

new dark ages and
a certain justice in
our sad leave-taking.

In blindness or
naked disregard
he was not unlike

the rapt poet of trees
and makers before
The Great War who

couldn’t see death in
the Aisnes and Ardennes
forests for his Trees

and never thought he’d
ever see an end to
first-growth woodlands

or dream that there
could possibly be
future times without

green canopies,
sublimity, poems,
posterity.

Larry Needham is a retired community college teacher who has published on Romantic literature and the poetry of Agha Shahid Ali. His work has recently appeared in a handful of online journals including: Amethyst Review, The Alchemy Spoon, and Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine. He lives in Oberlin, Ohio.

Photo credit: Thomas H via a Creative Commons license.

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U-turn

By Sarah Waldner

Sharp U-turn on the language around
fossil fuels. The text now includes a reference
to “low emission and renewable energy.”
New funding arrangement on loss
and damage. Phase-down of unabated
coal power. Concrete demonstration
that we really are all in this together.
No one will be left behind.

Sharp concern on the low wage around
solid rules. The text now includes a preference
for “dough addition and immutable density.”
New crushing pavement over loss
and damage. Gaze-down from unabated
coal power. Concrete demonstration
that we really are small in this weather.
No one will be left behind.

Sharp heartburn on the sandwich around
possum duels. The Etch-A-Sketch now includes a mess
for “pro magician and chewable elderly.”
New hush-hush engagement of fox
and cabbage. Chase-down of underrated
troll chowder. Wet feet explanation
that we really are all Paul in this dresser.
No one will be left behind.

Originally from British Columbia, Canada, Sarah Waldner is currently residing in the Ontario area where she is a student at Trent University.

Poet’s note: The first stanza of this poem is comprised of direct quotes from a BBC article about COP27 and the speakers at the conference within it: Climate change: Five key takeaways from COP27 – BBC News.

Photo credit: James Saper via a Creative Commons license.

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Global Outcry

By Amal El-Sayed

A wave of blue and yellow—
A sea of sky and grain
Washed all over the world.
Braving snowstorms and epidemics,
You marched in the name of peace.

A row of strollers lying in wait
In Poland, in Slovakia.
Supplies, donations, support.
Homes—opening
Families—welcoming
The whole world—enclosing Ukraine with love.
So much love.

I applaud you for your humanity—
But I ask you:

Did you offer that same warm welcome to Syrian children
Who are slowly being chewed by hunger in patched tents?
Did you embrace the Syrian mothers with the same solidarity
Or did you leave them to freeze to death in bone-chilling camps?

Where were you when Iraqi women
Struggled to escape the blows and kicks and slaps
Of domestic abuse?
Or did their abayas make them not civilized enough for you?

Where were you when Afghan women
Cried hopelessly for help under the rule of terrorists?
Or did their burqas make them subhuman?

And pray tell—where were you when Mexican children
Were turned away at your borders?
Left to the gangs, the traffickers, the cartels!
Or did the color of their skin make them lesser?

Where was your outcry when Palestinians were
Displaced, tortured, executed, massacred—
Their blood fertilizing the land, their screams echoing through the sky.
Yet still, you turned them away.
Where was your welcome, your sympathy, your so-called humanity?

And did you forget the refugees from
Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, Dominica, Haiti
Who walked through deserts and crossed perilous oceans
To reach YOU.
But all you did was turn your cheek and say:
Illegal, Criminal, Other.

Amal El-Sayed has an MA in English literature and is currently working on her PhD in English poetry. She is an assistant lecturer at Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry Pacific and Spillwords. Her short story “Unmask Me” is to be published by Wyldblood Press in October 2023.

Image credit: “Refugees in Despair” by Ani Bashar via a Creative Commons license.

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Scheherazade

By Phyllis Wax

The tales she told
night after night
for a thousand and one nights—
fascinating enough
to keep the king entranced
and to save herself from beheading.

But bedtime stories from today’s Persia,
women targeted like wild game—
pheasants or pigeons, squirrels, rabbits—
men taking aim
at faces, breasts, genitals
to cause maximum pain,
birdshot pellets maiming those most tender,
most sensitive spots,
the parts men seem to like best

Who is listening
to these tales?

Social issues are a major focus of Milwaukee poet Phyllis Wax, but she is also inspired by nature and human nature. She has read in coffee houses, bars, libraries and on the radio. Among the anthologies and journals in which her poetry has appeared are: Feral, The Widows’ Handbook, Writers Resist, Jerry Jazz Musician, Rise Up Review, Spillway, Peacock Journal, Surreal Poetics, Naugatuck River Review, New Verse News, Portside, Your Daily Poem. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, as well as the Best of the Net and Bettering American Poetry anthologies. Reach her at poetwax38@gmail.com.

Photo credit: “Iran Protests” by Taymaz Valley via a Creative Commons license.

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Batasan ng Lansangan — Street Parliament

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By Arthur Altarejos

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Batasan ng Lansangan

Naririnig ko na sila bago pa ako lumiko
Hinahati ang hangin, kutsilyo’y kanta
At katok ng tibok ng tambol na ginugunita
Ang tunog ng sumasayaw na kawayan

Dito sa puso ng imperyo
Kalahating mundo ang pagitan
kami’y nagtatagpo’t nakikiramay
Para magbukas ng korte at ipatunay
Na ang distansya ay hindi nagbubunga ng apatya
Hindi rin nito tinatastas ang tela ng pagalala
Na bawat kawalan ay dahilan din ng aming kalungkutan
At bawat kaapihan ay amin ding hahatulan

Na may pananalig kasing sigla ng araw
At tapang ng isang bala na pinalaya
Kami’y patuloy na umaawit
Sa ilalim ng isang radyaktibong kalangitan
Na binubunyag ang bawat butil ng galit
Ng bawat kasapi na gumawa ng paraan
Magkongreso
Bilang isang bayan
Sa dayuhang lupang ito

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Street Parliament

I hear them before I even turn the corner
Carving the dull air with song
And drum beats that remind me
Of the sound of dancing bamboo

In this city at the heart of empire
Half a world away
We come to hold court and prove
That distance does not beget apathy
Nor does it strain the fabric of memory
That each loss is also ours to mourn
And each slight ours too to condemn

With the conviction of daylight
And the confidence of a bullet
We sing our songs
Beneath a radioactive sky
Reflecting every bit of rage
Of every little life
We have managed to congress
Into a nation
On this foreign soil

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Arthur Altarejos is a Filipino community organizer, community worker, and health educator based in New York City. He writes about the things lost and gained in translation between Hiligaynon, Tagalog, and English, the languages of his home. His writing has appeared or will soon appear in Sky Island Journal and Blue Daisies Journal.

Image credit: “Drumming and Day-Dreaming” by Wayne S. Grazio via a Creative Commons license.

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When Ruby Falls

By Marjorie Gowdy

“Have you been targeted by the President of the United States?”
Lady Ruby Freeman in chalkboard-white suit, crimson hat,
asks The Man.

Swept aside like yesterday’s ashes, Our Lady.
Stalwart Georgia pine,
poll counter, valiant, precise.

Slandered on screen by a middling mayor-madman.
Chased like a fox by hungry hounds, rushed to ground,
Ruby gave her girl a ginger mint.

See Ruby Falls, the highway signs say. Spectacular scenes
of cascading magenta and pearl, cavern’s secrets
cry on the face of beaten rock.

Can you believe them? Slicked-haired, pop-eyed pols
pointing wrinkled fingers at the screen?
No, don’t.

Listen instead to Lady Ruby, underground, reputation splayed.
Like the Falls, secreted to a cool haven.
Wrapped in red robes, singing truth.

Stone-hardened men connived Ruby’s fall. Slapped her heart.
Yet our bounteous bronze goddess stands to burst their lies.
She is Lady Ruby, and Ruby will rise.

Marjorie Gowdy has pursued careers that fed her writing. Recent poems are included in Valley Voices, Indolent Books, Clinch River Review, Artemis, the summer and fall/winter 2022 editions of Anthology of the Writers’ Guild of Virginia, The Centennial Anthology of the Poetry Society of Virginia, the book Poetry Ink 2022 by Moonstone Press, and the 2022 book Quilted Poems. Her chapbook, Inflorescence, was released in March 2023. Also an illustrator, Gowdy lives and writes in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Photo credit: Raymond Clark Images via a Creative Commons license.

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Twin Pandemics, Twin Cities

By AJ Donley

They warn you about the dangers
that you’ll be feverish
that your throat will hurt
that it’s contagious
that you won’t be able to breathe

they try to scare you away from action
with the risk of symptoms
that have always been there

because COVID is new
but racism is not

I wear a mask to protect my loved ones
from the pandemic that affects them
my white friends and family
worry about what goes into their lungs
when people of color are breathing in
the soot from communities we’ve burned
to the ground then blamed on riots
we doused them in gasoline and got mad
when they lit a match to keep warm
no wonder they can’t breathe

Now I’m feverishly marching
my throat hurts from screaming
anger is contagious—but so is justice—
let it infect you
lest it kills you

AJ graduated from the University of Minnesota, Morris with a BA in psychology and English. She also has her MA in forensic psychology from the University of North Dakota. Currently working in the sexual violence field, she seeks to explore the human psyche and illustrates what she sees with poetry. AJ plays with form, language, and imagery in an attempt to interpret what she experiences. She seeks decadence and authenticity and piercing honesty. Poetry is a practice and is never complete; just as the mind is subjective and dynamic, so too is her writing.

Photo credit: Dominic Dominic Jacques-Bernard via a Creative Commons license.

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Questions/Answers (for Black U.S. citizens applying to register to vote in Selma, Alabama, in 1963—based on actual exams)

By Ellen Girardeau Kempler

After you pay your poll tax, Boy, I’ll ask you

how many jellybeans are in the big jar
I keep on my Registrar’s desk?

How many bubbles are in this bar
of soap?

How many seeds are in a watermelon,
any watermelon? (An answer you should
naturally know.)

How many drops of water are in the Alabama River
running faster than you could ever march, under the bridge
named for the KKK’s Grand Dragon, the bridge you’ll have to cross
before the correct answers to my questions even begin to become clear,
before, out of the tear gas fog, you feel the shock of electric cattle prods,
the whack of lead pipes raised to concuss you past thought, only then
will you understand that NO is the answer to ALL of my questions.

Because I am your judge, jury and executioner.
Because NO is the only way we can keep you chained
caged buried burned drowned beaten hanging
in the place where we first brought you,
intended you to stay.

Ellen Girardeau Kempler’s poems have appeared in the 2022 Mindful Poetry Anthology, Narrative Northeast, Writers Resist, Phoenix Rising Review, Gold Man Review, Orbis International Poetry Quarterly and many other small presses and anthologies. In 2016, she won Ireland’s Blackwater International Poetry Prize and honorable mention in Winning Writers’ Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest. Called “a timely and powerful selection of climate poetics,” her chapbook, Thirty Views of a Changing World: Haiku + Photos, was published in December 2017 by Finishing Line Press. Learn more at www.ellengirardeaukempler.com and follow her on Instagram @placepoet and Twitter @goodnewsmuse.

Image credit: Courtesy of the poet, an image from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

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Bipolar

By Angel T. Dionne

“But you don’t look bipolar,”
as if bipolar
is screaming at cars from the sidewalk
as if bipolar
is hopping up on tables
to proclaim that I’m the Messiah
as if bipolar
is no career
and no relationships.

“But you don’t look bipolar,”
as if being happily married
means I can’t struggle
as if an academic career
means that the ups and downs
hurt any less
than they would
if I were jobless
as if leading a normal life
invalidates my illness.

“But you don’t look bipolar,”
meaning that they think bipolar type II
should be easier to deal with
than type I
meaning that they don’t see five days up
and two weeks down
as a medical struggle
meaning they can’t see that although the symptoms are different,
they’re nonetheless painful
meaning they don’t see why it’s necessary
for me to take two little pink pills
one little white one
meaning they view my psychiatric medication
as a crutch
a weakness
meaning that they view my cycles as romantic
creative
eccentric.

Angel Dionne is an English professor at the University of Moncton Edmundston campus. She finished her PhD in creative writing at the University of Pretoria in 2020, and she is the author of a chapbook of strange flash fiction entitled Inanimate Objects (Bottlecap Press) as well as co-editor of an anthology entitled Rape Culture 101: Programming Change (Demeter Press). Her work has appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul, JAKE, Sein Und Werden, The Molotov Cocktail, The Missing Slate, The Peculiar Mormyrid, Crack the Spine Anthology, Everyday Fiction, Narrow Doors in Wide Green Fields, Surrealists and Outsiders, Good Morning Magazine, Garfield Lake Review, and Litbreak Magazine. She currently lives in Canada with her wife and cats. Learn more at angeldionne4.weebly.com.

Photo credit: “State Normal School” in the public domain via Salem State Archives.

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